Senior Olivia Overington of Westford Academy recently won a Silver Medal in the 2017 Scholastic Art Awards National Art Competition . The art piece she submitted was a drawing of two swings at a playground at Jack Walsh field, one of many parks in Westford.

“We had to go take a photograph of what we thought represented Westford for us,” Overington said.

She went to a few different places looking for inspiration, including some playgrounds at different schools in Westford, but ultimately decided to draw the swings because she loved going to swing sets as a kid.

“Jack Walsh field was a place I went to as a kid with my friends,” Overington said. And the park wasn’t just a place she went to as a kid. When she wanted to be alone or needed some place and time to think she went to the field.

There are symbols in the drawing. The swings have a symbolic meaning and she chose to draw them for a special reason.

“To me, Westford is really about the relationships and the friendships that I’ve made and all the people that make Westford special. And having two empty swings next to each other kind of encapsulated that,” Overington said.

She titled it Two-by-Two because in her junior year she read the book “Our Town” and she says that one of the main messages was that people go through life two-by-two, so it is really important to find a person in life to hold on to.

As for why she entered the contest, she says that her art teacher wanted her class to explore and enter works of art, to get out of the realm of just high school.

“Often time we kinda get stuck in the bubble of Westford Academy and only have comparison relative to our fellow students in Westford. She thought the contest was a good way to get our stuff out there and have it be looked at by a larger scale of people,” Overington said.

As for a future in art, Overington is sure it will play a role in her future but not as a major.

“I’m not going to college for art, but I’d love to take visual art classes. There are some schools that have visual art programs that you don’t have to take as a major,” Overington said.

Overington is not committed to any school, but some schools she is applying to are Harvard, Brown, NYU, Northeastern, Pace, Fordham, UMass Amherst, and George Washington University.